I'm going with Swift!!!

That night I was looking forward to going out for dinner. I found that I was expected to go out with dinner with my roommate *every* night we were going to be there, so any remaining privacy or alone time I was going to get before SIX WEEKS of sharing a truck with another man, were crushed. Oh well, at least I got to pick out the restaurants.....

Day 2 we discovered the guy who was doing the rest of the orientation hadn't done it before because the guy who normally does the orientations was on vacation. After the humilating experience of being the only guy in the room who could show Gary how to work the powerpoint presentation, I decided it was time to keep a lower profile since this knowledge unexpectedly made the others to view me as some sort of mysterious computer guru. Not having $4 to $50 billion dollars in my bank account or owning a company that makes a mediocre, monopoized operating systems, I begged to differ with their assessment.

Now mind you, I love to learn and I would tend to be the type to focus on the information I'm provided with, but these two remaining days of orientation must have been designed to test even the most focused.

There's really not much to say about the orientation. It was painful. What's interesting was not so much the orientation itself as the window it provided me into the mentality of many of the potention drivers attending the orientation.

For God sakes, if you are going to go to an orientation, why not research about it ahead of time? My having helped with the presentation and a couple of other white collar activities got me some undue respect. That's great and all that jazz, but it also came as a price. For some reason many around me thought this made me qualified to give my opinion on the fitness of the company, and give my assessment as to whether each of them made the correct career decision by going with Swift. Example:

Orientation Guy 1: "Did you know they were only going to pay us $.26 per mile for the first year?"

Me: "Actually, they pay you $.26 per mile only if you have Hazmat, and $.25 per mile if you don't-"

Orientation Guy 2: "Only $.25 per mile for the first year? That's B.S.!!!"

Me: "Well, actually you get paid up to $450 for your first 4 weeks of training then up to $500 at which point you then get $.25 for the first three monts, and then you get a raise every three months you stay with the company."

And so it went......

The other interesting thing was they tended to feed off each other. While everybody was optimistic on the first day, correct and incorrect information fed a frenzy of growing negativity. Frankly I grew tired and impatient of many in the orientation, but managed to keep my patience. I learned nothing that made my regret my decision with Swift, and found the company to be pretty nice as far as I could tell in the little time I was there.

 

Well, I'm really tired and have to start driving tomorrow around 7 to 8 AM in the morning so I'll have to post more sometime in the future. It may be awhile before I post!!! If I fail, or change my mind (which I won't), I'll be the first to admit it and will still post on here. So if you don't get any posts from me for awhile just realize I'm driving a lot and sharing a truck with another man and avoiding showers like a cat....

 

Thanks Sammycat!

I promise, I won't worry anybody anymore. But I can't guarantee that I'll be able to post a lot. I'm telling ya, I'm trying to ride out this mentor thing, and get prepared to pass some Swift tests.

My mentor program is 240 hours long and I'm 80 hours into it. Only 66.6% to go...yay!

 

I don't feel it would be fair to post his name, I'm afraid....but I would recommend that if you go with Swift you request a company driver, not an owner-operator. Believe me, I'm generalizing, I'm just going by what I've heard from a lot of Swift drivers....

Also, unless you truly can't stand smoke...I'd recommend you say you don't have a preference, you'll take a smoker or non-smoker. Otherwise you'll be waiting awhile for a mentor.